‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’
When: Plays through Oct. 31
Where: La Comedia Dinner Theatre, 765 W. Central Ave., Springboro
Cost: $51-$69.
For more: Call (937) 746-4554.
SPRINGBORO — If a script at La Comedia Dinner Theatre called for a “sassy country girl,” Leslie Jo Bissett would almost certainly play her.
After all, the Carlisle woman has played a great many country girls, all the way from Annie Oakley to Tammy Wynette.
So it’s a more than a little ironic that her latest show, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” does call for a country girl — but Bissett’s not playing her.
The production is a musical version of the 1988 film starring Steve Martin and Michael Caine as two con men working the French Riviera. Bissett plays one of the women they try to con. Her character is a Cincinnati girl who won a contest to go to the Riviera, but the con men think she’s actually rich.
Bissett is a little out of her usual depth in this part. The Ohio girl had to reach back into her past to play a Cincinnati girl.
“In ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ I’m a mezzo-soprano, so I had to brush off the dust from those notes ... it’s the ingenue role I did a lot when I was younger. It’s been fun,” she said.
La Comedia has been giving Bissett much of her stage work in the past several years. Asked how many shows she did for the dinner theater, she said, “I have no idea — a boatload. I started there when I was 14,” she said.
And Bissett will be coming back to Springboro for the very next show: a reprise of “White Christmas,” which La Comedia says was its most popular show when it played in 2007. Once again, she will perform the role played by Rosemary Clooney — whom Bissett played once a number of years ago.
Starting in the late 1990s, Bissett had her own theater company called Hometown Productions that put on shows in Carlisle, but Bissett had to shutter it about five years ago.
“I couldn’t keep it going the way of lot of people do them ... The economy killed us,” she said.
Still, Bissett has kept her theater alive with shows not only at La Comedia, but at Showboat Majestic in Cincinnati and the Human Race Theatre Company in Dayton.
She also is the music and youth director at the New Jersey Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, where she lives in the same home she did as a child.
“I started in music, which has taken me full circle. I’ve made one large musical loop that keeps going around, and I love all of it. It keeps me focused,” she said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2836 or erobinette@coxohio.com.
About the Author